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Monday, July 23, 2012

Before being elected president, John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles
in Courage, a Pulitizer Prize winning book which contains biographies of
eight US Senators including Sam Houston, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster
who resisted their constituents and/or political party in order to do what they
believed was right.

With Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage as a model,
NSCIA-Houston is launching its own version of Profiles in Courage. The
NSCIA-Houston Profiles in Courage will highlight those who have suffered
a spinal cord or brain injury and continue to pursue their dreams.

I was a freshmen in medical
school in my first year and ended being hospitalized for a year and two months.
But since it happened at Harvard Medical School, in one of the swimming pools
of the hotels at the complex, I ended up doing my year-plus stint as a patient
in Harvard teaching hospitals so that I was able to do my second year of
medical school in the hospital as a patient. Even though I wasn’t able to
attend any classes, I’d study at night. And they were very good at having the
professors tutor me at night. Then I rejoined ­ ­ then I was released from the
hospital, I rejoined my class for the third year. And then I graduated a year
later.

Yet, he continued his medical education doing physical therapy
during the day and studying at night. Three years later, in 1975, he
graduated from Harvard Medical School.

Krauthammer continued to work hard and achieve success. He
began planning psychiatric research in the Carter administration and was a
speech writer for Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980. At the same
time, he began contributing to The New Republic and by 1984, he won the
“National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism” for his articles in the New
Republic.

One year later, in 1985, Krauthammer started a column in the Washington
Post which received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1987. In
2004, Krauthammer won the Irving Kristol Award after his speech Democratic
Realism to the American Enterprise Institute in which he laid out a
framework for post 9/11 foreign policy in which he argued that there should be
an international focus on promoting democracy in the Middle East while fighting
terrorism.

As a commentator on Fox News, Krauthammer has earned the respect
of his peers and even former Presidents of the United States, being called “the
most important conservative columnist” by New York Times columnist David
Brooks and “a brilliant man” by former US President Bill Clinton.

Krauthammer was able to achieve his success by keeping a
positive attitude about his injury. In an interview, he said, “And what I
resolved is I would never ­ ­ I would try never to let it change my life, or
change the direction of my life.” He says his day, “It’s like your day
except it’s a little bit harder. You know, all the routine stuff takes a little
bit longer, life is a little more expensive, but ultimately it’s not that
different.”

Watch the full Krauthammer interview below. Krauthammer
begins to talk about his accident at 12:10.